Tactically, the Premier League is in a real state of flux.
After four consecutive title-winning years with a distinct, possession and territory-based style, Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City were reduced to a third-place finish on 71 points in 2024-25 — their worst since Guardiola’s debut campaign of 2016-17.
Meanwhile Liverpool cruised to the title in their first season post-Jurgen Klopp, with Arne Slot’s side developing a reputation for their flexibility and adaptability. They had 25 wins and only lost twice across the first 34 matches, by which point the trophy was theirs.
Nottingham Forest showed European football can be earned with a throwback, defend-first and counter-attack strategy, while for the second season running all three promoted teams were relegated.
So what might we expect from 2025-26?
Flying full-backs, not inverted ones
Last season, the chasing pack of European clubs seemed to realise, en masse, that they did not need to copy City, Chelsea, and Arsenal by rolling a full-back into midfield. In fact, those clubs had even more success with flying full-backs running beyond a winger.
Per SkillCorner, Milos Kerkez was the only player in the division to make 100+ overlaps and 100+ underlaps, which suited the directness of Bournemouth’s in-possession approach — and with him joining Liverpool this summer, makes him a younger iteration of Andy Robertson.
“He’s a player that, because of his physical condition, arrives so many times to the last third with the ball under control to put good crosses,” said Bournemouth head coach Andoni Iraola of Kerkez last season.
Likewise, the arrival of Jeremie Frimpong from Bayer Leverkusen, a wing-back in their Bundesliga-winning team of 2023-24, means Slot can deploy maximal width and beyond-the-ball full-backs on both sides.
(Carl Recine/Getty Images)
Newcastle United’s full-back pairing of Lewis Hall and Tino Livramento were particularly frequent underlappers; Antonee Robinson put up 10 assists for Fulham last year, completing the most crosses of any player in the division, consistently running beyond from left-back.
Other honourable mentions include Daniel Munoz (Crystal Palace), Aaron Wan-Bissaka (West Ham United), Michael Kayode (Brentford) and Lucas Digne (Aston Villa).
As per SkillCorner, the frequency of full-backs overlapping has decreased in recent seasons, down nearly 14 per cent in 2024-25 compared to the 2018-19 campaign. Meanwhile, underlaps are on the rise — up by more than a third over the same period.
This might seem strange considering the prevalence of inverted wingers, who play on the opposite side to their dominant foot, and like to cut inside, which would suit a supporting overlap.
However, many coaches want their wingers to start with high and wide positions regardless, and by enticing opposition full-backs out one-v-one, an underlap can often unlock a defence.
The ‘Lavolpiana’ — dropping a pivot in
Premier League midfield battles are changing. We see that at goal kicks, when teams will often build-up with six players close to their own goal and position four up on halfway, leaving a hole in central midfield because opponents press man-to-man so often.
In settled possession, 4-4-2 mid-blocks are increasingly common, to man-mark in central midfield. Consequently, short passing routes through the centre of the pitch have a lot more risk than reward (unless a team has a pivot with the press resistance of Rodri or Ryan Gravenberch).
As per Footovision, an advanced data provider, the proportion of line-breaking passes played centrally during build-up dropped by five percentage points from 2023-24 to 2024-25 in the Premier League.
Expect to see more of the Lavolpiana tactic, named after Argentine coach Ricardo La Volpe. This is where a central midfielder drops deeper, playing between the two centre-backs, and breaks lines with longer-range passes.
Here is Newcastle’s Sandro Tonali playing that role, allowing right-back Kieran Trippier to push forward and create a two-v-one against Ipswich Town’s left-back.
If any midfielder was made for the role, it is Youri Tielemans at Aston Villa. He ranked ninth in Europe’s top-five leagues last season for through balls (24).
With Rodri injured for most of last season, Bernardo Silva used the tactic on an as-needed basis against particularly stubborn mid-blocks. Mateo Kovacic has operated similarly for Guardiola, with this being a consistent feature of his sides.
And here is Carlos Baleba doing that in the build-up for Brighton & Hove Albion’s opener away at Manchester United.
“We had a good balance between defence and controlling the game in possession,” Brighton head coach Fabian Hurzeler said afterwards.
Coaches tend to value this build-up tweak not just for the way it opens passing lanes — as opponents are reluctant to commit a player too high to press the midfielder — but also because it provides extra cover as rest defence versus counter-attacks.
Back to basics set pieces
There is an irony that even as clubs focus on and invest ever more deeply in set pieces, the tactics are trending towards yesteryear.
Last term, 60 per cent of all corners were inswingers, up from 41 per cent in 2018-19. Short corners have remained pretty consistent (roughly one in five) while outswingers have really fallen out of fashion.
Teams largely copied the approaches of Arsenal and Aston Villa, two of the earlier Premier League clubs to hire formal set-piece coaches, who tended to pack the six-yard box and drop inswingers onto the opposition goalkeeper. Everton, too, consistently caused teams problems with these delivery types under Sean Dyche.
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“It is special in the Premier League because you can block, push, foul and there is no whistle,” Crystal Palace head coach Oliver Glasner said of corners last season, indirectly offering an explanation of why more teams are prioritising inswingers — because they are allowed to.
“This gives you more opportunities in attacking set plays but it causes more trouble when defending set plays”.
Premier League corners: a reliably busy scene (Stu Forster/Getty Images)
Likewise, teams are increasingly launching the ball upfield from kick-off, and long throws have been on a steady rise across the past four years too: there were 279 throws into the penalty area in 2020-21 (and only three goals from throw-ins that season). Last season, it was 501 and 20 goals from throw-ins.
Thomas Frank’s Brentford were — as in previous seasons — league leaders here, with 103 penalty-box throws and six goals from throw-ins. Frank, now being Tottenham Hotspur head coach, might give the tactic more popularity if his new side continue to use it.
The potential re-rise of the 3-4-2-1
Chelsea in 2016-17 were the last team to win the Premier League playing a variation of a 3-4-3. City morphed into this shape plenty in attacking during 2022-23 (when John Stones would move from centre-back into midfield), but generally there has been a homogeneity of 4-3-3 among the league’s best.
However, the 3-4-2-1 is starting to creep its way back in. It is the first-choice shape of Ruben Amorim at Manchester United, and Glasner at Crystal Palace — the pair having success with it at their respective former clubs Sporting CP and Eintracht Frankfurt.
Amorim and Glasner, 3-4-2-1 enthusiasts both (Michael Regan/Getty Images)
Here is how it looked for United and Palace in settled possession, able to commit a wing-back onto the last line and with dual No 10s that can pin opposition full-backs, while playing close to their No 9.
It was a similar story with Wolverhampton Wanderers and Vitor Pereira. When he arrived in December 2024, the club were 19th on nine points after 16 matches.
His predecessor Gary O’Neil had switched between a back three and four, but Pereira went purely with a 3-4-2-1 for the rest of the season and Wolves took 33 points from their remaining 22 games. They survived comfortably, finishing 16th.
It might be a blueprint for more teams, particularly promoted sides needing a solid defensive foundation. With so many teams defending in a back four, a wing-back system can be a relatively straightforward way of overloading opponents and creating a front five.
In total, there were 120 instances of the 3-4-2-1 or 3-2-4-1 (different ways of labelling the same thing) in 2024-25, with its frequency trending upwards since 2019-20, where it was only 25 times.
A focus on attacking transitions
The Premier League took the German Bundesliga’s crown last season: England’s top tier is, statistically, the most counter-attacking among Europe’s major leagues.
Fast break shots have been on a five-year rise, as has the expected goals (xG, or chance quality) from those scenarios.
After 54 fast break goals in 2021-22, the past three campaigns have seen 87, 83, and, most recently, 112 goals.
More teams trying to play expansively, and in the opposition half, are increasing counter-attacking opportunities. Add to this that there is a particularly high frequency of strikers and wingers with the physical and technical capacity to exploit disjointed and underloaded defences.
Liverpool, Tottenham Hotspur and Arsenal were the top teams at scoring from fast breaks last season — it is no longer an underdog tactic — while Brighton, Tottenham, Leicester City, Nottingham Forest and Brentford were a quintet of clubs who conceded at least eight goals from those scenarios.
“Everyone is talking about what we’re doing with the ball, scoring goals, but when you look at our counter-press, how we win the ball back, it’s so hard for opponents,” Arsenal captain Martin Odegaard said in March 2024.
“I’ve been on the other side before. Trying to defend deep and escaping that when you are being pressed is so difficult.”
Expect to see even more aggressive counter-pressing next season, perhaps more tactical fouls, and coaches with a focus on rest defence — the positioning of players and spacing between them when a team has possession, ready to counter-press should a turnover occur.
(Top photos: Getty Images)
